JFK Intern Details 18-month Affair in White House

Mimi Alford, who interned at the White House half a century ago, told NBC News that she began an 18-month affair with President John F. Kennedy with an invitation to go swimming in the White House pool on her fourth-day on the job.

“It really didn’t seem unnatural just because everybody was friendly and I went back to work afterward,” she told Meredith Vieira in an interview scheduled to air on NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams” on Wednesday. “No one said anything.”

Then 19, Alford received a second invitation from the president the same day she went swimming.

This time he escorted her on a private tour of the White House, which ended at Jacqueline Kennedy’s bedroom — where Alford would lose her virginity.

While she felt overpowered by the president’s aura, Alford recalls being a willing participant.

“I had just a little bit of second thoughts, not enough to keep me from going back,” she said. “He was this unbelievably handsome man — 45 years old,” she said. “Overpowered in the fact that he had chosen me and taken me on this tour. That’s what I mean by being overpowered by the whole situation, not overpowered physically that someone had grabbed me and done this to me and made me do something that I wasn’t really willing to do, because I really think I was willing to do it.”

Alford said she believes that Kennedy cared about her and she didn’t feel guilty at the time.

“He was married to Mrs. Kennedy but I didn’t, at the time, feel guilty. I’m not going to say he loved me but I think he did like me a lot. He cared about me,” Alford said.

She had just completed her freshman year at Wheaton College in Massachusetts when she landed the summer internship in the White House press office back in 1962.

Alford recalled doing her homework in a limousine on her way to the airport to visit Kennedy in Washington, D.C. on one occasion. She traveled at times with the president, and even upon her return to college he would call her.